Forget Maryjane, get the cocaine flowing earlier!
@desmirelle, how about magic mushrooms spreading across the world's continents?
Going for a situation where China shows early relative growth and the spread of technological development rapidly grows the rest of the world's population. China hits an upper population limit and the rest of the world catches up number wise so by the time you get to the "modern day" (space exploration beginning, internet, etc.) China has a severely diminished numbers and economy advantage compared to the start of the timeline (Song China). Due to a lack of any extensive and long term colonization the population and economic power of Europeans was significantly decreased as well. Having more people across the world living a higher quality of life, rather than a small amount of elites in a few regions leads to significantly more people having the opportunity to meaningfully contribute to scientific development. This is the reason for the rapid tech development mentioned in another thread.
Song China showed rapid population growth. How high does the population of China get before the government introduces population control measures or the population starts to stabilize?
Good points. So what would the population of Europe stabilize around? Around 200 million?
How about Africa? If Africa is completely covered in agricultural societies by 1400 (widespread development starting in the 1300's) and at that time has medicine on par with North Asia could be get the population to 900 million by 1600?
Africa could have cassava, maize, sweet potato and rice traded to them and would undergo similar development. Since some people in this period knew the world was round and maps would exist roughly depicting each region someone may figure out you can go from the Americas to Africa without going through Asia and trade would start flowing directly from the Americas through the west coast of Africa. Uncertain exactly how long this would take to eventuate through, definitely a few centuries. Curious to hear any suggestions, corrections or estimates for how long this may take.
@Anzû, now that's going to be an interesting timelineGet everybody high as a kite.
I've discussed how fast a Native American Indian population could recover after a plague in another thread but how about a European population? If the American colonists lost 90% of their population in a plague (let's say in 1700) would we be likely to see the American colonists double their population every 50 years? This would be without any significant immigration as migrating into a recently active plague region won't be too appealing. There would also be no invasions of the colonies while they recover (let's say potential invaders are scared of bringing the plague back home) The Americans would still have infrastructure such as farms or roads survive. Houses would likely exist but they should probably be careful reclaiming those.
Let's be a bit merciful and say that people are still very interested in buying their natural resources (perhaps there's a prevailing belief that makes buyers less concerned about exchanging objects or animals if it's done a certain way). To cut the survivors a little more slack let's say this world has very early adoption of oil (this world may be veering into some wacky tech development) so somebody out there is interested in purchasing oil from the survivors.
Would growth likely be far slower? Perhaps a doubling every century?
If we have governments in the Americas in the 1700s collapse into a anarchy how hard would it be to conquer? How long until stable governments begin to reappear? Let's give the Americas a 25 fold population boost prior to the scenario.
On one hand a lack of unity and small numbers could make them vulnerable. The fact that invaders have to cross an ocean to get at the Americas could make an attack really difficult. Militias could also make holding territory quite painful. In this situation let's assume that for unstated reasons they will be treated as being a different ethnicity from any invaders. This means that if Britain for example comes for the former 13 colonies, the Americans there will find themselves being treated as if they were Africans, Maori or Aboriginal Australians.
How powerful could Australia be if it leveraged as much of its land for agriculture and population as was safe for the nation? Due to a timeline quirk the entire nation including the North and West is as heavily populated as can be sustained, with its population further supplemented by trade such as is the case with Singapore and Japan. How large could the population get?
Alternate Australia later on relies on extensive solar panel farms to power massive amounts of desalination plants and enacts Singapore esque water saving measures. Now that water is now much more plentiful, how high can the population get?